


Meeting the Goddess-in-Law

by cinnamonsnaps



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Post-Balance arc, Post-Episode 69, The Astral Plane, major injury to oc, making up lore, nothing ott, some blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 18:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13487475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamonsnaps/pseuds/cinnamonsnaps
Summary: When a complete stranger falls victim to an accidental Schrodinger's death, Taako realises he's going to have to take matters into his own hands and contact the Raven Queen himself.Taako meets the Raven Queen for the first time. A gift for my dear friend Jenny ;;;;0





	Meeting the Goddess-in-Law

**Author's Note:**

> this fic isn't really focused on injury or gore or anything - an OC does get seriously injured and there's a little blood if that bothers you!
> 
> i made up a bunch of lore for this...... god forgive me

It doesn’t exactly _phase_ Taako now when he watches someone die, but it never really gets better, and he’d be worried if it did. As accidents go, it isn’t as gruesome or grisly as it is awfully mundane. He’s in a busy market, picking up and squeezing vegetables for freshness, has his hand on a particularly nice aubergine when his ears pick up on the panicked whinnying of a horse.

He looks around, always interested in a show, and through the throng he spots three men desperately tugging on the various reins and harnesses of an absolutely massive horse. A massive, out of control horse, whose eyes are rolling wildly, whites visible even from this distance, and just as Taako thinks _should I cast charm or something...?_ its rear hooves flick up and lash out to where Taako can’t see them-

There’s a scream from the crowd. The horse is still bucking, men are yelling, and slowly, like rings expanding on a calm pond, Taako can watch the impact ripple through the shopkeepers and traders and customers as their heads swivel round to some spot on the floor.

Taako puts the aubergine down.

Now people are beginning to run to the centre of impact. Taako watches as some cleric is pulled from a nearby temple, charging up some healing spells as they run into the crowd. He waits. Kravitz or Lup or Barry will be here soon. People will cry and mourn. Blood will be cleaned from the cobbles, maybe a notice will get nailed to the town hall, but people will come after and never know what happened here.

He still waits. Well, sometimes people don’t die immediately.

“I’ll take this,” he says to the shopkeeper, gesturing to the aubergine - but he is staring behind Taako at the scene in horror, stepping on his tiptoes to get a look as someone casts _Sleep_ on the horse, so Taako slips the aubergine in his basket and quietly moves away.

“- keeping her in stasis, I cannot release her or she’ll die -”

“- by sheer chance she was walking by -”

All Taako can see is a knot of people. No reapers drawing themselves from between matter, no scythes releasing souls. Just the top of the cleric’s hood as it bobs urgently, and the smell of restoration magic, which always reminded Taako of garlic and rubbing alcohol for some reason.

“I can’t keep a pulse,” the healer says and Taako only just manages to hear it. Where are the reapers? If there’s one thing that he knows for sure about his partner’s profession, it’s that he’s never, ever late. “I’m sorry, I think - she’s dead, but - but she’s still-”

Someone shifts, clearing a small section, and just for a moment Taako has a clear line of sight down the cobbles, right into the staring open eyes of the victim, a young woman, blood trickling from a red hairline, sightless, mouth open in an awful slack way, before someone moves back and she’s blocked from view -

Taako has felt the cold creep of death several times over his long and dangerous adventuring career. He knows what it looks like when there’s no life left. Kravitz should be here. He isn’t. Every instinct that saved him, worn-down and threadbare but still active even now, yells that something isn’t right here, something has gone wrong. Someone can’t stay half-dead for this long - not when they’ve clearly failed their saving rolls - their soul should be freed, and yet.

Taako runs and ducks into an alleyway, and pulls out his stone of farspeech.

“Krav,” he says urgently, “baby, could you come check something out for me? Please?” He waits a second. “Kind of need you right now. So uh. Come on. There’s been an accident and uhhh it just doesn’t feel right, you know?”

No answer. Taako glares at the stone, wondering if it’s broken or Kravitz is really out there being busy and ignoring Taako’s very important very urgent message. Barry and Lup similarly don’t answer, which Taako had expected, and for a moment Taako considers just giving up and going home and accepting that not everything in the world is his business, and the girl will either make it or die, and someone else will sort it out later.

“That’s my _sister-!_ ”

Taako’s grip tightens on the stone as a male voice yells from the market behind him, hoarse and grief-stricken.

“Guess I gotta,” he says with a sigh.

 

 

Some rituals he picked up over his time in the caravans. Some he learned from Kravitz, just by watching, because hey, it never hurts to take an interest in your loved ones’ careers. Some rituals... just feel instinctual, like he knew them from birth, and this one is of that category: first thing he does, quickly, is transmute some discarded pigeon feathers from ratty, grey corpse left mauled by a cat into long, sleek raven feathers. Next, he burns them, a quick and carefully controlled fire spurting from his fingertips, and the pungent stink begins to permeate the alleyway til he wrinkles his nose in disgust.

Finally, he begs.

_Listen, hey, wow I know I’m not the best person to approach you what with my uh, track record, but this isn’t right and everything feels wrong, my knee is playing up and you know that means some kind of supernatural shenanigans are afoot, just- something’s wrong. If you gods do spend any time looking out for us then I think I really, really need you right now-_

Taako knows immediately when _she_ arrives. The shadows seem deeper for a moment, and the smoke from the feathers turns sweet, cloying.

“Taako?”

Taako looks up, and thank the gods, sees the wonderfully handsome skeletal face of Kravitz in front of him. “Oh, it worked, hell yeah.”

Even without any muscular structure, skin, or ability to perform any facial movement aside from sinister jaw clicking, Kravitz still manages to look hopelessly confused. “What worked? Where am I? One minute I was working, the next the Raven Queen was pulling me somewhere?” His voice slipped awkwardly from his business accent to his regular one mid-sentence, and Taako finds it unbearably endearing, but this is the worst possible time to flirt.

Not that that had stopped him before.

“Just come with me,” Taako says quickly, grabbing one bony hand and pulling them both out of the alleyway. The crowd is still there, but now guardsmen and women are clearing a space around the unconscious horse and the body of the girl, and someone else is sat by the cleric casting presumably more healing spells. Kravitz takes in the scene quickly.

“A horse accident?”

“She got kicked on the head. I just, I don’t know, they keep saying she’s dead but you didn’t turn up.” Taako follows as Kravitz walks as far as the guards would let him, and then even further as the sheer intimidating stare of his eyeless sockets clears a path in front of him. That was something else Taako had noticed about Kravitz while he worked. People didn’t really register he existed, and stood at a distance subconsciously, and it wasn’t like Kravitz had cast a glamour or a diversion spell over them: something about a mortal brain looked at the looming, black robed skeleton approaching a body and checked out for a few minutes. Taako doesn’t really get it, but that’s probably because he’s in love with said skeleton, so whatever.

“She did die,” Kravitz says quietly and evenly from where he’s crouched beside the healers, and now Taako can see that small, familiar orb of light beginning to rise from the body towards Kravitz’ bony hand, “so why wasn’t I alerted...?”

“Who are you?” says the cleric suddenly, blinking at Kravitz, and Taako blinks too - and suddenly Kravitz has taken his old human form again, all warm brown skin and well-groomed hair.  

Kravitz ignores the question. “How long has she been like this? Did you put the stasis spell on her?”

The cleric nods. “I can’t make head nor tail of it myself. The poor girl’s clinging on, I can sense it, but...” He lowers his voice respectfully. “Her heart’s not beating. The rest of her... it’s not looking g-”

“What is it?” cries out a young man who appears to have been held back by a guard. “Can you help her? Tell me! That’s my sister!” It’s the hoarse voice from earlier. Taako has to tear his gaze away from his wet, tear streaked face to the shoes of the sprawled girl as he’s restrained again, the guards giving him comforting but firm words, as if that could even begin to help.

Kravitz is now holding the glowing orb in his hand, closing his eyes for a second: they open wide.

“She’s still here because this wasn’t meant to happen yet. This isn’t her time.”

The cleric draws back, understanding glinting in his eye. “I recognise you now. Yes, I know you, reaper.”

Taako’s about to shimmy on over there and tell this old dude to back away from his mans, but Kravitz just nods, and it seems like the tension between them isn’t violent or stressed but of unhappy familiarity, as if they always meet at some unfortunate junction in two separate lives.

“Tell me,” continues the cleric. “What do you mean it weren’t her time?”

The reaper reaches down so gently and so tenderly, cupping the girl’s soul in his hands but not rending it yet, his gaze hard and strange as he holds it safe. “Fate and death and all souls living or dead maintain a delicate balance, an ancient dance with steps that shouldn’t be disturbed. Somehow her string was cut too early.” He looks up at Taako, and Taako’s breath holds. “We need to talk to the Queen.”

“We? Like me too?”

“Yes, you too, darling.” Kravitz stands up, the bright soul still between his hands, but now they and his hands are in a much wider position as if carrying a much bigger, heavier load. The girl’s body stays, cold, bloodied, lying on the floor. “Keep her cold,” he instructs the cleric, “and keep her in stasis. Do not let her come out. We’ll be back soon.”

“I want to come!” yells the young boy, her brother, but Taako sees the set of Kravitz’ jaw and shakes his head.

“No can do bambino, you gotta stay here and watch over her for us, alright? We’re just gonna go chat with the higher-ups about a little messy business.”

“Look after her!” The boy stares Taako in the eye, tears now dried up and replaced by quiet anger. “Look after Fiona!”

“No promises,” Taako almost, _almost_ says, but he’s not a complete monster, so he lets his expression soften and says instead:

“Like my own sister, okay?”

 

 

When Kravitz rends a tear into reality again, soft point of light in one hand and scythe in the other, Taako slips through into a room with stone walls and a stone flagged floor, and an eerie soft pink light filtering through metal wall brackets but with no discernable source. The temperature change is immediate. It’s like walking into a fridge.

The tear seals shut behind them with a soft pop and immediately the main source of light and heat is lost, and Taako pulls his cloak around himself a little tighter.

“Could stand to invest in some underfloor heating here, baby, really brighten up the place with some candles too.” His brain catches up with his mouth, and he yelps. “Shit, this is the dead zone, isn't it. I'm nut deep in dead soul city.”

“Yes Taako,” Kravitz says with an amused tone, “you’re in the Astral Plane. Please don't touch anything. You know you're not supposed to be here.”

There are no windows - only long grey stone walls and high arched doorways, and soft wall hangings in that same imprecise pink as the lights that shifted as they walked past. Taako almost drapes himself over Kravitz, uncomfortable as hell - maybe even god damn unnerved.

“You sure this isn't a trap to finally cash in on all my bad boy extra life points? I thought we were all settled up on that?” He only sounds a little nervous as they pass through almost identical chambers and high, cold corridors. His breath comes out in a fog when they pass through a shadowed area. Kravitz’ does not.

“Correct. I brought you here for the top anime betrayal of all time,” Kravitz replies, the soul of Fiona still held gently between his arms. “We’re just going to check in with my boss. Just. Don't insult her or steal from her or anything.”

Taako hums noncommittally.

 

The longest corridor they had been walking down for a few solid minutes finally ends, and Kravitz lets them into a vast hall that curves up high into a vaulted ceiling. The furthest wall is missing entirely, replaced by a low fence to presumably stop idiots like Taako from stumbling off, and beyond the fence is a vast, formless, shifting sea under a white sky. The sea is tinged pink, just barely, and while there aren't any cresting waves or white horses it still flutters with constant movement.

“The Astral Plane,” Taako says dumbly, “looks boring as hell. Where is everything?”

“It's not really a place for everything,” Kravitz counters, walking slowly towards a small pit lowered into the very centre of the room. From the pit, carved into the floor in geometric design, are small channels that wind round the room and run under Taako's feet. “It's a transitional stage more than a state of existence. It's just... more convenient for me to live here.”

Taako imagines Kravitz living, alone, in the cold corridors and bare chambers, surrounded by a dead sea, and frowns. “Don't Barry and Lup live here too now?”

Kravitz concentrates for a moment, and oh, there goes the hot skeleton face. Taako can't believe how lucky he is that his boyfriend looks so unbelievably hot as both the unliving manifestation of death and as a tall dark and handsome stranger who looks like he stumbled out of a steamy romance novel.

What does he do with his handsome, well-planed face? He smiles, and Taako feels goofy and choked up, which is illegal.

“Yes,” he replies, and what were they talking about again? Oh. Lup and Barry. “It's certainly been a lot less quiet with those two around. Especially with Lup's penchant for discovering in a wonderfully practical way which materials in this fortress are or are not flammable.”

There's a short stone bench in front of the pit, and Kravitz lays his own cloak on it before placing Fiona's soul there too. It's strange. Though Taako can only see a small floating ball of light, all of Kravitz gestures seem to accommodate for a much larger body.

“Is she okay?”

“She's not getting any better... or any worse. She must still be in stasis.”

Taako leans forward, staring at the soul. “She isn't dead, right? You didn't sever her from the body or anything? How’s she here, anyway?”

“What do you mean how's she here?”

“Well... she's not dead. Yet. But you didn't bring her body along.”

“You didn't bring your body along either,” Kravitz points out, and wait, what.

“What,” says Taako. The pit in the centre is filled with a still, clear liquid that creates a mirror-like surface, so he walks forward and leans over.

There's no sign of his familiar and just-below-inhumanely beautiful face in the water. He keeps leaning forward, confused, to reveal where his chest should be a small ball of light, just like Fiona's, and he gapes.

“So you're telling me I've just been a contextless soul just kind of chilling around without a body this whole fucking time? You neglected to tell me that my hellacious bod has phased out of existence?”

“Only temporarily,” Kravitz says, and his voice is somewhere between fond, amused and maybe a little penitent. “I can still see you as you usually are. Sort of. Souls cling to their mortal forms for a while after separation.” His eyes slide from Taako to the pit, and his face hardens. “We need to talk to her now.”

 

Talking to her involves dropping three black feathers into the pit of water. As they sink, they glow from black to intense white, dissolving in the unknown fluid, and an acrid smoke seeps from the pit into the various channels carved into the floor. It was cold before, but now it grows even colder, in the same way that a crisp cloudless day in the heart of winter smells cold and bites at Taako's fingers: somehow, while he isn't looking, the pit of fluid ices over, and a chill breeze ruffles his cheek. Or, it would, if he had one. Apparently.

 _Reaper_ , says a voice - or rather, a voice is directly blasted into Taako's brain. It makes him shiver. _Reaper, your call has been answered._

“My queen,” Kravitz answers, bowing his head. “I have a troubled soul with me.”

 _I can see_ , the voice says. _Sun elf. Have you finally turned yourself in to my kingdom?_

“Not, uh,” Kravitz says awkwardly. “Not that one.”

There's a long moment of silence, and Taako is somehow uncomfortably reminded of a particularly strict great aunt he and Lup had once been fostered by for a short stint. She had a habit of looking down her glasses at them in frustrated silence every time something else caught fire or broke or turned purple with yellow spots, but there was no real proof that either Lup or Taako were to blame.

 _Very well_ , says the Raven Queen, and suddenly she's there. Not just a voice or a cold feeling, but a tall figure with long black hair and a sharded crown, and long robes that shift past and through each other in ways that defy mortal physics. Across her face is a veil, and despite there being no discernable breeze or wind in the room anymore, it shifts and flutters endlessly. There's something so very not human about her - something just so intangibly wrong, like an optical illusion, where the shadows of her robe seem to go back further, where her hair coils and curls in impossible knots and patterns, where she looks as if she isn't so much standing within the view in front of Taako but superimposed onto it. It hurts his brain, and he has a feeling that she's doing it on purpose.

 _Let me see_ , and wow that voice is even creepier when the mouth it's supposed to come from is clearly not moving behind the facial veil.

Kravitz gestures to the bench where Fiona is, and the Raven Queen moves forward out of where she had been standing on the icy pit. Taako feels something crackle beneath his feet. It's frost, expanding out as she moves nearer.

One of her long hands reaches out, and Taako cringes against his will as she caresses the air around the soul with careful deliberation.

 _Sun elf,_ she says suddenly, _tell me what you witnessed._

“Uh, okay, well. I was in the market and I heard a horse kicking around, and when I looked up it kicked into the crowd, and I think it just managed to get her by chance,” he replies, visualising the scene.

Kravitz cuts in: “she won't die, Ma'am. Her soul should be ready for reaping but something is keeping her clinging to her body.”

The Raven Queen lets her hand fall back to her side and nods her head once, slowly.

 _We are all allotted our time,_ she says. _Fate weaves together our strings and cuts when the measure of a mortal's being comes to an end: to deliberately try to extend one's life beyond one's allowance is a crime for which I employ you to pursue the perpetrator, my reaper._

Kravitz nods in recognition. Taako shifts awkwardly, feeling attacked.

 _These are the rules carved solid into the very frame of the world,_ she continues. _No living soul may alter its own day of reaping lest the balance of all things be shattered and power be begotten by the jaws of the hungry._

Taako shifts again.

“Is she a criminal?” Kravitz says, materialising his scythe, but the Raven Queen holds out a hand.

_The Material Plane that hosts her body is a shifting, changing, imperfect thing. It must be, to properly conduit all energies from the Planar worlds, to house creatures as remarkable and unpredictable as mortals. To forget to allow concession for chaos would be folly: when there is one chaotic sunny day in winter, when the crocuses bloom too early, when the frost withers them before Spring can properly claim them as her own... we do not punish the flowers for daring to live._

Her hand twists, and Taako blinks. He can feel something in front of him. Something big and deep, something complicated. In his minds eye, he imagines it as a vast roll of cloth, and the Raven Queen seems to run her finger over each thread. But that still feels too simple.

_Had this girl been a centimetre away. Had the horse been a second later or a second earlier. Had the thread of her time not become tangled or crossed with one it shouldn't have at some point in her weaving..._

The Raven Queen trailed off. The tapestry that Taako had felt faded away.

_The girl should still be alive._

“That’s- that's some bullshit!” Taako suddenly bursts out. “If there's been some kind of, oh I don't know, godly cosmic mistake, then just let her live. Ain't her fault that things just somehow happened like they did-”

 _The gods do not make mistakes_ , the Raven Queen says coldly, and Taako chokes as what feels like an icy hand wraps around his very core, the small point of light that hovers in his chest. Kravitz lets out a small noise beside him. _You think it unfair, but what is unfair is that you should escape death so many times while all other beings abide by my rule. How many lives have you lived? You care about the family of the deceased now - you, who have never worried about grief. You think yourself above death? Be careful that your hubris does not become the knife at your throat._

“Point taken, point taken,” Taako gasps out.

“My queen,” Kravitz says quickly, “his bounty has been forfeit.”

“And I'm - I'm just saying that since it's not her time yet...”

 _We do not feel pity for the dead_ , the Raven Queen says.

“But she's not dead yet,” Kravitz says quietly.

Taako shudders, the cold bone deep, his vision hazy and his lungs struggling to take in anything more than small gasps as that freezing grasp remains on his soul.

 _As my reaper says, your bounty is forfeit._ The coldness withdraws, and Taako floods with relative warmth and relief. _You should practice your gratitude._

“Believe me, I'm practically bursting with gratitude,” Taako says with difficulty. He looks up at Kravitz, and Kravitz tears his own gaze away with difficulty, worry and relief reflected in the slope of his eyebrows.

“Is that it?” he asks. “Am I reaping the girl?”

 _No_.

“Then what the hell was all that about-?” Taako yells, but feels the slightest brush of cold again and clamps his mouth shut. “We're chill. It's chill. Just to intimidate me, huh, I can respect that.”

The Raven Queen ignores him. _She hangs in the balance. Let her return to her body. I will meet with she who weaves, and we will untangle the girl's fate to see on which face her coin lands._

Now she turns to Taako, giving him her full attention, and Taako realises with a flood of fear, dread, and maybe arousal that the discomfort he had felt before was merely a shadow of what she could make him feel: that before, she had been making at least some attempt to shield her true nature and appear a little bit human, whereas now...

Taako looks on into a black abyss, writhing, shifting, wreathed with feathers and frost, limitless and deep like some sunless ocean trench, and feels it - the unstoppable rhythm that all things know, the force of death that turns leaves brown and red, the darkness, the gleam of moonlight on snow and on the eyes of hunger staring through barren trees. Every time he's been caught without warm clothes, every time the slush has seeped through his boots and he was afraid he'd lose his toes, every snapping cold wind and glittering particle of frost comes back to him in that moment. He doesn't know if he's standing, kneeling, or curled up desperately trying to keep warm.

_And you, sun elf that would fight for the soul of a stranger from me while stealing under my very nose. You who evaded me for so long, but would summon me directly for the death of a nobody._

It sounds like the crunch of dead bracken hidden under the first fall of winter.

_My reaper must love you to defy a force such as this. Be aware that should you do anything to break his trust..._

Wolves howling. Famine. Claw marks on wooden doors. The sharp, sharp beaks of carrion birds.

_You will hear from me after I meet with Istus._

 

And then she's gone. Taako can feel it - everything is a little warmer, a little brighter. Honestly, he's in a little bit of a daze, and he can't feel any of his extremities, but he's pretty sure it's fine.

“I think she likes you,” Kravitz says apropos of nothing, and Taako begins laughing.

 

 

 

They’re walking back together through the fortress, carrying Fiona's soul again, when Lup and Barry appear round a corner.

“Hey Kravitz. Who you got there?” Barry asks.

Lup's eyes narrow as she squints at them. “Taako? Is that you?”

Taako waves, though he doesn't have a body so it's probably useless. “What's up.”

“Are you _dead_?” Lup screeches, and Kravitz quickly holds his hands up to placate her.

“He's just visiting. There was an unfortunate incident and he helped me get the Queen to deal with it.”

Barry looks at the soul in Kravitz’ hands and tilts his head. “An escapee?”

“Not quite.”

“We just got done with the stupidest chase yet. Imagine hunting down some ornery old dude through a museum. He kept possessing the mannequins and now I'm never going to get the image of fantasy Genghis Khan chasing down toddlers in the ancient magic exhibit.” Lup cracks her spine and stretches. “I'd invite you to stay for dinner, Taako, but we don't eat here, and also you don't actually have a stomach right now.”

Taako looks down at his stupid invisible body and his stupidly visible soul, and shrugs. “Just come over for dinner soon. I'll whip us up some kick ass ravioli and I can tell you about how the Raven Queen asked me to call her mom.”

“She did what?” Barry and Lup say in unison, and Kravitz bursts out laughing.

“Let's get you back in the Material Plane before you get chucked into a cell for blasphemy.”

With lots of promises to come over soon, Kravitz rips a hole in reality, and together they pass through into the world of light and warmth.

 

 

Taako is by a cobbler's stall in the market again some weeks later when he hears someone yell “Taako!” behind him.

Years of experience mean that he immediately starts calculating the best route to fucking peg it down to get away from an angry mob, but one curious glance reveals only a young woman jogging towards him. She's waving.

“Yeeees?” Taako says, fumbling for something to use to give her his signature.

“I don't know if you remember me,” the woman says, and Taako squints. “I'm Fiona. They told me that you helped me out when I had that accident with the horse.”

“I remember.” Taako strokes his chin. “Hey, you're alive!”

He didn't even recognise her. The woman he'd seen when they returned her soul to her body had been gaunt, pale, smeared with blood. She'd slipped into a coma immediately and the cleric looking after her had explained it was touch and go, 50/50 chance of survival.

“Yeah! A little worse for wear,” and she pulls back her curly red hair to reveal a huge scar on her temple, “but...”

“But not chilling in the Astral Plane with the other death criminals is pretty cool, right?” Taako jokes, and her expression is distraught.

“I'm sorry, I didn't meant to imply I'm not grateful-”

He cuts her off immediately. “Don't even fret, babe. I'm just happy to see you doing so well.”

Her eyes sparkle. If she cries, Taako has no idea what he's going to do. Panic, probably.

“I'm just...” Her voice wobbles. “I can't believe I got rescued by _The_ Taako. It's really you! And the stories are true - you really are a hero.”

“You heard that song thing as well, huh,” Taako says bashfully. “Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal.”

“Can I...” She averts her eyes. “Can I have an autograph?”

“Sure, hand me a piece of paper-”

“No, on my arm?”

“Your arm?”

“I want to get it tattooed on me. If that's okay.”

Taako's world goes sideways.

“Hell- hell yeah that's- fuck dude, go ahead,” he stammers, and she grins.

“Cool.”

So of course he makes his signature extra fancy, with lots of little swirls and even two kisses, because if she's going to get it permanently on her body then she may as well have it extra as fuck. When he's done, she looks over the moon.

“Hey, and uh,” he says, “tell your brother I hope he's doing good.”

“I will!” She calls back as she starts walking away. “Thanks! It was nice to meet you!”

“You too!” he calls back. As soon as she's out of sight, he slumps against the counter, shit eating grin on his face.

Holy shit.

The first thing he feels is relief - everything turned out okay. Istus pulled through and the Raven Queen let her live, and that's great in and of itself. He sends up a little prayer: _thank you, I mean it, that was pretty baller._ The slightest touch of cold on his cheek could be from the open door to the cobbler's tent: could be something else.

The second thing he feels is overwhelming pride, because fuck, tattoo autograph, that is the bomb dot com, end of story. He's gonna brag about this for weeks to Magnus and Merle.

Finally, his emotions settle down into something like contentment, something like peace, and he turns to the cobbler to finish his order from earlier.

The cobbler is staring at him with wide, adoring eyes.

“You're Taako? From TV?”

“ _YES_!” Taako yells with joy. “Autograph?”

 

 

Much much later, as Taako rests his cheek against Kravitz’ cold chest in bed together, he tells him about it.

“Funny huh,” he says. “At first I was just doing it to see you again, but then it all kind of worked out.”

Kravitz pauses, sinking further into the luxurious pillows around him. “Yes. It all worked out.”

There's a beat of silence. Taako pushes himself up into a sitting position, sea of blankets pooling at his waist, and levels Kravitz with an even stare. “Babe. Baby. That's your 'things didn't actually work out’ tone, and I don't like it. You wanna try that sentence again?”

Kravitz says nothing.

“ _Babe_.”

“The Summer Solstice is coming up soon, I believe.”

“Don't change the subject-”

“We've had an invitation to celebrate it at a small banquet.”

Taako blinks. “From... who? Lucretia? Merle?”

Kravitz gulps. “The Raven Queen.”

 

Silence reigns in the bedroom for a full seven minutes.

 

“Are you telling me,” Taako chokes out, “that the Raven Queen is inviting me round for _dinner?!”_

 

  


End file.
